An Interview with Lorne Kent: Author of The Point of Murder

David Lorne Harrison is a first-time author, writing as Lorne Kent. David was born and raised in the county of Suffolk, England and emigrated to the Ottawa, Ontario region of Canada in 1980 with his wife, Sandra. His career has been in electronic and software engineering but, now retired, David is focusing his energies on his new passion of writing crime mysteries.

He has been an avid reader of crime mysteries for the last twenty-five years and loves to watch crime TV series. His undying resolve to excel at everything he does and to solve his own mysteries, technical or fictional, has led him to create a fascinating hero character in Detective Inspector Brian Golding of the Ottawa Police Service.

David lives in Ottawa with Sandra, his wife of forty-six years.

Tell us about your book.

They say “write what you know” for newbie authors and having lived in the Ottawa, Ontario region for the last 42 years, I wanted to write a novel that featured our fine city. The story begins with a murder at a local historic site on the shores of the Ottawa River. Detective Inspector Brian Golding of the Ottawa Police Service soon gets embroiled with poisons, bomb plots, political intrigue and a twisted, vicious serial killer. The chosen site of the fictional murder is a favorite spot for my wife and I to sit and relax and would be the last place on earth you’d ever expect to find a murder victim. As well, recent events reported in the news were an inspiration for some of the story threads.

Why did you want to write a book?

My career has been in electronics and software engineering and, now in my retirement, I wanted to do something completely different, but fun. And having an innate curiosity and a love of solving problems, I thought that writing a novel would be a fun and exciting new hobby. It turned out to be just that as I had a ball writing my very first work of fiction.

I had to research so many new things that I had never thought I’d be researching, for example, poisons, Semtex and C-4 explosives, the pathology of body decay, Pegasus spyware, CSIS operatives, police super-computers, and travel through Europe. It was so much fun learning all these new things!

Why did you choose to self-publish?

I wanted to retain complete editorial control over the whole publication process. As well, the royalties offered by traditional publishers are so very low that I wanted to publish in a manner that was substantially more financially rewarding, per book sale, in the long term. However, the upfront costs of self-publishing, assuming you hire a professional editor, etc. can be very daunting.

What tools or companies did you use, and what experience did you have?

I use Affinity Publisher from Serif Europe Ltd. instead of the very expensive Adobe InDesign program for my final formatting and typesetting. Affinity Publisher has a low one-time purchase fee, not a subscription model like Adobe uses. Publisher can do almost everything Adobe’s InDesign does, only at a much lower cost. Of course, MS word and Scrivener were used in the early composition stages.

For editing, I used FirstEditing in Florida. Their rates were significantly less expensive than the standard 3 cents/word for line editing that freelancers typically charge. The editing was of a high standard, although my wife and I picked up some additional required edits afterward, so it wasn’t 100% perfect. I used Shutterstock and iStockPhoto for images for my book cover and my logo, as well as photographs that myself and my wife took at the fictional murder site.

What do you think are the main pitfalls for indie writers?

It is very hard, initially, to understand the whole writing and publishing process. But there are tons of online resources available, so it’s research, research, research FIRST before you dive in at the deep end. I found finding an affordable professional editor was very hard, unless you had several thousand dollars to spend just like that. I spent about $1000 USD for my professional line editor at FirstEditing.

But before you even get to need a line editor, you must read, rewrite and self-edit over and over until it is ready to be presented to your Beta readers well before it gets sent for professional editing. Don’t EVER think that a first draft can be sent anywhere! It was my fifth draft that I sent to my Beta Readers and a few drafts after that before it was production ready.

What was your steepest learning curve during the publishing process?

My steepest learning curve was how to show, not tell! I think all newbie fiction authors have that same problem and, having a technical writing background, my first draft was chock full of detailed descriptions that explained what the characters were doing and feeling instead of showing by their actions and dialog. Even my final draft still suffers somewhat from that problem and that is something I must improve upon before I release my next novel, Bittersweet.

Tell us about the genre you wrote in, and why you chose to write this sort of book.

I love reading crime mysteries, police procedurals in particular, and also watching TV crime series, especially really well-done ones such as the BBC’s “Line of Duty.” I have been reading crime mysteries for the last 20-25 years, so I thought, “Let’s give this a try.”

Who are your biggest writing inspirations and why?

My favorite author and a great inspiration to my own writing is Louise Penny, author of the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series. Her in-depth psychology of her characters is just so amazing. Her descriptions of the fictional Three Pines village in the Eastern Quebec townships and the characters that live in it are so well developed, I almost want to live there with them.

Other authors I have been inspired by are Margaret Truman and her PI detective Robert Brixton in her Capital Crime series. I love his no-nonsense character and the way he overcomes all the hurdles she puts in his way.

What are your plans now your book is published?

I’ve just started on the next book in my Inspector Brian Golding series, called Bittersweet. I suspect much of my time is going to be tied up in marketing and selling my first novel, The Point of Murder. Whilst I would love to write just for the fun of it, it will be important to try to recover as much of the up-front costs involved in self-publishing to make my newfound hobby a practical reality.

What did you learn on your journey as an author?

Writing your first novel is very, very hard! There is so much to learn about writing techniques. I borrowed books from the library, and then purchased them, about how to structure your plots, how to write a good mystery, and about crafting words into a novel, all from famous authors. The learning curve is steep and I still have a long way to go. But I managed to garner a four-star review from SPR, which I think is pretty good for a first-time novel.